


Prayers to Keep the Devil Far Away From Those I Love

by essieincinci



Series: No Finer Mess To Be Found [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age Play, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Tattoos, Anxiety, Belly Kink, Chubby Kink, Daddy Kink, Dom/sub, Feeding Kink, Insecurity, Kink Negotiation, Knifeplay, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Religion, Safeword Use, Subdrop, Top Drop, Under-negotiated Kink, chubby bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-03 20:39:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 16,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4114219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/essieincinci/pseuds/essieincinci
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yup, sure did.” Steve’s tone changes immediately, back to that quick, short thing he’s been rocking since the end of February. “Best honeymoon ever.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Gaslight Anthem's "Red Violins"
> 
> This will make absolutely zero sense without reading the other parts of this series. Especially the last part. I know I said it would stand alone, but, um. I lied?
> 
> Once again, huge thanks to vanessadoes and alittlepudge-neverhurtnobody for cheerleading and betaing. 
> 
> And lastly, this part deals mostly with Clint and his past, which I read as being full of both abuse and Old Time Religion. I don't think it's graphic, but you know your triggers best. Please let me know if there's anything you'd like explained or if I missed a tag.

“Okay, try it now.” Bucky’s voice echoes from under the sink.

Clint leans back, just in case. He slowly turns the faucet on, and, after watching it run for a moment, shuts it back off. “Yeah, looks good up here.”

“Great!” Bucky wipes his hands on the towel he’d tucked into his jeans and pushes out from under the sink. Clint braces himself, reaches down to give him a hand up, then follows him into the living room.

He wishes Josephina had better taste in decor. Isn’t she friends with Steve? Shouldn’t she have more interesting artwork on her walls? He’s careful to stay at least three steps away from Bucky or Steve. He’s trying very hard not to hover. Coulson told him to try not to hover.

“All finished, Steve. Jo, you’ve got a functioning sink again.” Bucky smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. None of his smiles have been right since he got back from his honeymoon about a week ago. Coulson says it’s probably just post-vacation let-down. He says sometimes it takes a while to get back in the swing of real life. Clint never took a vacation before Coulson, and it’s not really like his life post-Sir could be called normal. So he defers to the expert on this one.

Steve and Fabiana look up from the living room table where they’ve been drawing. Steve’s using pens and talent, Fabi crayons and far more reckless abandon. It looks like Fabiana is having fun, crayons clenched tight in her fists. Steve just looks tired.

“Look at all that red, Fabiana!” Clint squats down next to her while Josephina shakes her work day off of herself and thanks Bucky for babysitting and fixing their sink.

“That’s a … great use of color.” Steve squints at Fabi’s drawing and pushes his glasses up his nose. He’s trying.

Fabiana grins and thrusts the picture into the air toward Bucky.

“Wow! That sure is a great drawing of me and Tio Teeb,” Bucky gushes, oohing over the drawing and winking at Steve.

Steve rolls his eyes and it’s the most normal thing that’s happened all week. Maybe Coulson is right. Maybe it’s just taking a while for them to remember how to be not-on-a-cruise-Steve-n-Bucky.

“Teeb!” Clint grins, looking at the mostly red scribbles. Softly, he asks Bucky, “How do you know it’s you?”

“That yellow line, that’s Steve, and the brown circle, that’s me,” Bucky explains proudly. “We’re in pretty much all of her drawings.”

"Even more than her mama," Jo tsks.

“Apparently, we’re her favorites,” Steve says, drily.

“The two of you. Did you enjoy your honeymoon?” Jo asks, straightening up the crayons while Bucky bounces Fabi around the room, saying his bye-byes.

“Yup, sure did.” Steve’s tone changes immediately, back to that quick, short thing he’s been rocking since the end of February. “Best honeymoon ever.”

Clint forces himself to breathe normally. Steve hasn’t been angry like this since well before Bucky came around.

“We did,” Bucky says, with a sharp look in Steve’s direction. “We’re going to go on a cruise again next year, though. We didn’t get a lot of the real _experience_ this time,” Bucky says with a slight leer, allowing Jo to draw her own conclusions. It’s a pretty masterful class in deflection. Clint would know. He’s just not sure what Bucky’s deflecting from. He and Steve aren’t fighting, Clint doesn’t think. Not each other, anyway.

Josephina and Bucky speak to each other in Spanish, but Clint barely passed his French requirement, so he has no idea what they say. He thinks he hears Fabiana’s name, but damn, that’s a fast language.

Steve’s no help, standing impatiently by the door, all but tapping his foot and staring at his watch.

Clint swallows. Everything is falling apart, slipping through his fingers, and he has no idea how to stop it. He doesn’t even know what _it_ is.

“Okay, well, we’ll see you tomorrow,” Bucky says, while Steve ushers him out into the hallway. He’s still fighting to get his arm through the sleeve of his leather jacket, and Steve actually sighs in relief when the apartment door shuts behind them.

Clint clears his throat. “So, Coulson’s working late tonight. I was thinking about hitting up Stark’s and monopolizing the karaoke stage. You in?”

Steve and Bucky share a strange look and Steve brushes his bangs off his forehead. They somehow manage to have an entire conversation that way.

“Nah, I think we’re in for the night. Steve’s been not ...” Bucky shrugs. “Feeling all that well.”

“Right,” Steve says. “Allergies.” His nose isn’t stuffed, he’s not coughing or sneezing, his eyes aren’t red. Medical science couldn’t dream of progressing that far if Clint lived seven hundred lifetimes. Allergies. Right.

Clint wants to make a joke about them rushing back to their apartment to be alone together, something like, “Didn’t you get enough of that on your honeymoon,” but that’s definitely not what’s happening here.

“Sure, yeah. Yeah, okay,” he says instead. “Feel better.” He turns away. Bucky still hasn’t gotten his arm into his jacket sleeve.

Clint ends up at Ruby’s diner, nursing a cup of coffee. Ruby pats him on the shoulder and brings him a piece of cherry pie “on the house.” She asks after Coulson and changes the radio to the old timey gospel station that somehow only comes in clearly in her diner. Clint’s pretty sure Ruby’s part angel anyway so that would make sense.

She sits with him and plays gin and lets Clint sing along to “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder” until enough time has passed that he can go home without breaking Coulson’s Night Out rule.

“Are you okay, sweet boy?” Coulson asks him when he gets in, setting his tablet aside and putting his glasses on the bedside table.

Clint shakes his head and silently crawls into bed to lay next to Coulson.

“Wanna talk about it?” Coulson scratches his fingers through Clint’s hair.

Clint shakes his head again.

Coulson’s hand stills. “Would you like to get your collar from the nightstand?”

Clint wants to nod, but doesn’t. This is supposed to be Coulson’s free night, the one night a week where he doesn’t have to take care of Clint. He deserves this, and Clint doesn’t want to take this away from him.

Coulson runs his hands down Clint’s back. They’re calloused from pens and paperwork. Not like Clint’s rough hands, hands that are almost farmer’s hands, but not. Clint’s hands, no matter how well-manicured he keeps them, give away his past, his truth, every time.

“Go on, then,” Coulson says, his hand stilling. He always makes Clint fetch his collar. He doesn’t make Clint ask for it with words, at least, but he does make him ask for it. Clint’s always been better with action anyway.

“‘S’okay. We can just go to sleep.”

“Are Steve and Bucky still - “ Coulson starts, but Clint cuts him off.

“They’re fine.”

Coulson resumes his long strokes down Clint’s back.

“They say they’re fine.”

* * *

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

The thing of it is, Clint's not lying when he says he's not into ageplay.

Phil spends far too long before he realizes what’s going on, trying to convince Clint that it’s okay, he loves him, they can talk about it and Clint can live his fantasies in a healthy manner, anything he wants, only to have Clint shut him down.

At first, he thinks Clint is just ashamed, not willing to open up about it. That’s understandable; ageplay is, even in the community, something that is often misunderstood, even frowned upon.

And Clint has had more than enough of his kinks being frowned upon.

“It’s not that weird, objectively speaking,” he tries, attempting to get Clint to open up to him.

“Sir, everything and nothing we do is weird, objectively speaking. I mean, not to shit on other people’s happiness, but -”

“Do not finish that sentence.”

Clint grins at him, and Coulson forces himself not to think of it as _shit-eating_.

And, well, Clint’s got a point. Still. “If it’s something you want to explore,” Phil starts again.

“Starting to think maybe it’s something you want to explore,” Clint mutters, turning away.

“I’m not opposed -”

“No, that’s it, isn’t it?” Clint says, rounding on him a little victoriously. “You want to do this, but you want me to think it’s all my idea.”

“No, I wouldn’t manipulate you like that.”

“Sure, of course not. That’s why you won’t let it go.”

“Clint, I can’t help but notice there’s _something_ here. If this isn’t it, then I need you to tell me what it is. We can tailor it to your specific needs and likes, but I can’t give you what you want if you won’t talk to me. That’s how this works. I’ve been doing this for a long time, sweet boy.”

But Clint pins Phil between himself and the wall with a glare. “Don’t call me that,” he says, voice low. “I’m not a child.” He turns and stalks out of the house.

He texts a few hours later: _I’m staying at Steve’s. I’ll be home before dinner tomorrow._ Properly capitalized and punctuated. That can’t be a good sign.

It’s more than Clint's general unwillingness to talk, discuss, and negotiate. Phil had figured out after their first discussion, the day after Clint had accidentally dropped to his knees in his living room at the mere suggestion of an order to have a seat, that he’d need to take a circuitous approach. That conversation had taken three hours and they’d barely scratched the surface of what Clint wanted from a Dom/sub relationship.

The next conversation hadn’t gone much better, with Clint barely able to articulate what he’s wanted without pacing around the room for minutes on end, enough to make even Phil jittery and tense. "Just tell me what to _do_ , and do things to me, whatever you _want_ , and it'll be _fine_ ," he'd insisted.

“Okay, okay, trial and error,” Phil reluctantly agreed.

“Yay!” Clint cheered, grinning at Coulson like he’d just promised him the world.

“But only for light stuff, just slightly darker than vanilla, Clint. Until I can read you better and you can articulate your needs. There are some things I will not do without a proper negotiation.”

“Boo,” Clint said, the smile dropping off his face.

“Don’t pout, sweet boy. We can still negotiate with you while you’re on your knees.”

“ _Now_?”

Coulson simply raised an eyebrow.

Clint dropped like a stone. “Ow. Ow, _fuck_ , ow.”

“Clint?”

“Forgot my knees aren’t twenty anymore.”

Coulson laughs.

“Don’t laugh! You’re dangerously sexy. You injured me with sexiness, and now you laugh at me,” Clint says, rubbing his knee and much more gracefully rolling to sit on his butt.

“I’m a sadist, Clint. What did you expect?”

“I expected slightly more fun, Sir.”

“Okay, well, see. Now we know. Broken kneecaps are a hard limit.”

Clint sticks his tongue out at him.

"Wouldn't have happened with proper negotiation, my sweet boy."

He’d instituted a weekly, then semi-daily when they moved in together, kind of reflection time. Some Doms called it _confessional hour_ , but between Coulson’s Catholic upbringing and Clint’s strangely devout religious childhood, he became uncomfortable with that term. Clint told him they didn’t do confession in his denomination, but it still sat uncomfortably.

Clint called it _lameass feelings hour_ , which, while crude, was essentially the point of the exercise. And didn’t give Phil the heebie-jeebies that his accidentally picturing Clint in a clerical collar had.

Clint had a minimum of thirty minutes, though at times he’d taken as much as an hour and a half, when Coulson wouldn’t speak. He’d sit on the sofa, all electronics turned off, and give Clint his full attention. Clint could sit where he wanted. Once, Clint perched on top of Coulson’s bookshelves, but when he didn’t get any kind of reaction, he climbed down and sat on the floor at Phil’s feet. As long as Clint stayed in the room and didn’t touch him with intent, he was free to fill the time however he wished.

The first few half hours had passed in silence, broken only by Clint’s frustrated sighs when repeatedly checking the clock did not make time move any faster. As soon as the timer dinged off, Clint was out of the room like a shot, usually going as far as leaving the house, coming back in and kissing Coulson quickly on the cheek, and taking off again.

Eventually, Clint started to fill the time. He’d make a seemingly outlandish statement, wait to see if Coulson was going to stay true to his word, and then follow it up with some sort of logic.

Well, logic according to Clint.

“Saw a snake today when I was shooting over at Tasha’s,” Clint says. He’s hovering at the edge of the room.

Phil waits. Clint’s been spending more time than usual with Natasha over the last month. Phil’s birthday is coming up in about a month, and Clint’s been slightly secretive for a few weeks already. The two are probably related. He’s only a little worried about what Clint has in mind. He doesn’t think Leo will survive if Clint sends another stripper to his office.

Clint interrupts his rather informative speech about reptiles to ask, “Did you ever want a boat?”

Clint forgets sometimes that Phil won’t speak until the half hour’s up, or Clint runs out of words.

“Nevermind. I’ll ask you later. I like your tie today, by the way. It’s silk. Silk’s nice.”

It’s also purple, which was why Phil bought it. He found it when he was away on business and it reminded him of Clint.

Clint comes over and sits at Phil’s feet. He presses his forehead to Phil’s knee, and then turns his face up to look at him expectantly. There’s supposed to be no touching, but sometimes Clint needs the reassurance. Phil rhythmically squeezes the back of Clint’s neck and waits.

Twenty-six silent minutes later, when Phil’s just about to call time, Clint takes a deep breath and sits up straight. He inches away, just out of Phil’s reach.

“I don’t like spankings and I wish you wouldn’t do that when I haven’t been bad and you can if you want to because I get that you like them and that part’s all about you but you said I could tell you if I don’t like something and you’d at least consider it and I don’t think you’ll use this as a reason to spank me more because I don’t think you’re like that and if you are you can and it’ll still be good and I’ll still be happy and love you or whatever but I don’t think you will and I don’t like them and it’d be good if you wouldn’t hit me with your hand or a belt or anything like a belt when I’m not in trouble other stuff’s okay though I gotta go for a run I love you bye.”

The door shut firmly behind Clint before Phil fully parses what he’d just said.

“The fuck just happened?”

*

Coulson had Clint soft and sweet at his feet, still in the transition of coming back from a light scene.

“Clint,” Coulson said, using Clint’s name to keep him from sinking back down. “How old do you feel?”

“One hundred and seven,” Clint says, smiling cockily back up at him.

Coulson pats the back of his head in a light tap. “Clint.”

“I feel my age. I guess.”

Coulson waits for him to settle on the sofa next to him.

“What are you asking me? Am I going to have to have feelings about it?’

Might as well dive right in. Clint had the toys, he had the clothes, he certainly skirted the line of childish behavior more often than not. He was more comfortable with their situation. Seems like a good time to try this again. “You suck your thumb,” Phil says.

“Fuck you, I do not,” Clint bolts upright, presses himself as far away as he can get from Phil and stay on on the sofa.

“Language, Clint.” Phil was pretty sure this would be his reaction. better to get the initial defensiveness out of the way quickly, and let Clint adjust through lameass feelings hour for the next week or so, then address the topic again when cooler heads prevail.

“I do not suck my thumb,” Clint says. “We’ve talked about this.”

“We’ve never actually talked about it. I think it’s time.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m not some kind of child.”

“I know that, sweet boy.” Phil says. “You’ve told me many times that you’re not a child. And I don’t think you are a child. But do you want to be?”

Clint shakes his head, less in denial and more as if he’s refusing to hear what Phil’s saying.

Still, he presses. “I need your words, Clint. When you’re ready.”

Clint hunches in on himself, preparing for battle. he stares at his hands for a long time. “I don’t need a daddy, Coulson.” Clint takes several deep breaths, and Phil can see him counting slowly to five in Russian, like Natasha does for him when he’s having a panic attack. “But.” Another five count in, five count out. “I might want you to take care of me. And be proud of me. Because I’m good sometimes.”

This last comes out as a question. “Of course you are, sweet boy.”

“But you don’t have to,” Clint says quickly.

“No.” Clint’s biggest fear, after everything he’s been through, seems to be burdening others with his mere presence. “But if I want to?”

Clint shrugs. “I guess that’d be okay.”

*

“You know for all his … Clint-ness, he’s never really been a child,” Natasha says, sitting down across from him and delicately sipping her drink while the band they’re here to see tunes up. Sound check seems to be taking longer than their set will.

Steve’s at the bar arguing with Tony again, shoulders held tight while Tony flails about trying to prove his point. How Clint could ever have thought Phil had eyes for Steve is beyond him. He’s a sweet kid, but really, _really_ not Phil’s type. _At all._

Phil looks out at the dance floor where Clint is teaching the twinkiest twink in the place, next to Steve, how to do this crazy complicated and sexy-as-fuck dance move.

Coulson knows. Clint’s told him a lot, and he’s inferred more. Nick had been a social worker before he chucked it all to take over at the record label. Sometimes he’d shared stories. Sometimes he’d come over just to drink. “I’m aware. If he really doesn’t feel like he wants to be a kid now, that would be fine. I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to adding that aspect to our relationship,” Coulson says. He must be drunker than he thought, because he continues. “Though it’s not something I need, so if he doesn’t want to, that’s also fine. I just don’t believe he doesn’t have any desire to have a childhood.” He sighs. “I just wish I knew what he needs.”

“You know more than he does,” Natasha says. “Far as he’s concerned, he’s got a safe place to sleep and he knows where his next meal is coming from. The fact that you don’t hit him to hurt is bonus. The fact that you give him what you do is near miraculous, and Clint honestly believes in miracles.”

“Like the ghosts?” Coulson groans.

“Like the ghosts,” Natasha confirms. “You, Steve, me, the time he saw the angels when he went to church camp, the time he swears he split the arrow with the other arrow down the center, the time he survived the helicopter crash, and the time he ducked to tie his shoe and didn’t get shot in the head,” she lists. “Miracles, according to the gospel of Clint.”

“You’d think dealing with him would be so simple, wouldn’t you?” Coulson smiles a little helplessly at her.

“You’d think.”

*

“It’s not necessarily about trauma,” Phil tries another time, after he’d taken them to a park for what was supposed to be a nice, quietly romantic picnic. It had instead turned into three hours of Clint trying out every piece of equipment in the playground and probably inspiring an entire generation to try things on the monkeybars that would make their mothers cringe.

Luckily, most ten year olds do not possess the upper body strength that Clint has.

“I know that. I wasn’t traumatized anyway,” Clint dismisses.

“Clint -” Phil starts, but Clint looks at him with hard eyes and a defiant set to his shoulders and he sighs. Clint’s refusal to admit his upbringing was at the very least neglectful, if not abusive, is a constant source of frustration for Phil. He’s not sure if Clint simply doesn’t see it, or if his refusal to admit it is some kind of coping mechanism. Clint’s generally fairly open about the way he views the world, even if his view is a few degrees off everyone else’s. But he’s also stubborn as a mule when it comes to defending those views.

Maybe Clint still just doesn’t trust him with it yet. It hurts to think that, but it isn’t entirely unreasonable. Things were still somewhat new when he first broached the subject, and it’s not like Clint had his introduction to the scene in a Safe, Sane, and Consensual manner.

Clint takes objection to that, too, and says everything he’s ever done, he’s wanted to do. Phil’s told him time and again that doing something because it’s better than the alternative isn’t the same thing. Clint shrugs. “Same difference in the end.”

“Wear the green tonight.” He nods at the shirt in Clint’s left hand. “I like you in green.”

Clint grins, wide and open, and scampers off.

Coulson comes into the bathroom to get ready as well. Clint grabs the little purple duckie from the bathroom sink and pops him onto the shelf in the shower before stepping in. Clint and Coulson have only showered together a handful of times, as Clint barely touches the hot water tap. It’s another thing Coulson is entirely sure comes from his childhood but that Clint sees as perfectly reasonable.

The duck gets a fingertip full of suds plopped onto his head while Clint washes his hair. Hot water bills he’s concerned with, but he has no problem buying the same thirty-nine-dollar shampoo as Natasha.

“Just his head?” Phil asks, pausing while shaving.

“Yes,” Clint says, implying Phil’s asking stupid questions again. “Shampoo strips natural oils from his back feathers, Sir,” Clint says, sounding so sure of himself that Phil tips his head in acknowledgment and carries on with his routine.

*

Clint gets a new pair of footie pajamas that he wears every night until Phil has to order him to put them in the laundry. Phil also buys him a ridiculously expensive Lego set that Clint looks at with nearly the same reverence as he looked at his first collar.

“Is that. Is that for me?”

“Of course, sweet boy.”

“And the Legos are _in_ the box?” Clint’s voice is barely more than a whisper.

Phil wants to wrap Clint up and never let him go, but he doesn’t want Clint to think he’s trying to hold him back from the blocks. “Yes, sweet boy. The blocks are in the box.”

*

“Go put your things in the toybox, sweet boy.”

Clint freezes. He does as he’s told, but then he stands up and faces Phil, hands shoved in his pockets. “I don’t want to play right now, Sir. Can I have some time alone, please?”

It was Coulson’s first instinct to say no, to find out what triggered this reaction in Clint. But Clint’s hunched shoulders and wide eyes made him pause. Clint didn’t look angry, he looked scared.

“Twenty minutes. Then we talk.”

*

Clint’s wearing Phil’s sweatshirt and jeans, and a purple plastic tiara, playing with his blocks in the living room. “If I step on one of those, I’ll put you in the corner every night for a week,” Phil says, not bothering to look up from his tablet.

“I’ll be lucky to get off with just a week. Fucking legos,” Clint scoffs, and crawls across the floor and leans into Phil’s lap to show him what he made.

Phil sets the tablet aside and tilts Clint’s hands back and forth to get a better look at what he’s built. “That’s … Stark’s club?”

“Yup. Pretty cool, right?”

“It’s amazing, sweet boy.”

Clint looks up at him, bashful and sweet. “Nah, it’s just something I do sometimes.”

“Would you like some other t- building supplies?” Coulson almost calls them toys, stumbles and covers at the last minute.

Clint shakes his head and starts to unbutton Phil’s jeans with his teeth.

So maybe Clint hasn't told him the ins and outs of his brain yet. They'll get there.

* * *

 


	3. Chapter 3

“Hey, Sir,” Clint calls, plopping himself down next to Coulson’s chair at his his desk. “Broughtcha somethin’.”

“What’s that, sweet boy?”

He waits for Coulson to save his work and roll back in his chair, give his full attention to Clint. Sometimes Coulson makes him wait a long time, earn it, but not today. Those days are hard for Clint, and Coulson knows it. The rewards are usually worth it, though.

“Ta-dum!” Clint says, opening the bakery box he’s picked up from the new place next to Steve’s shop. “Bucky and I went shopping. He still won’t buy cookies. They’re so weird. And adorable. Adoraweird.”

Coulson smiles at him, that one look he gets where his eyes are soft and his lips quirk and that kind of makes Clint feel like he’s made him proud, sort of. That makes him think about the whole daddy thing they’re still sometimes arguing over, though, so Clint shoves the box at Coulson. “It’s an éclair. It comes highly recommended.”

“Well, thank you,” Coulson says. Clint watches him when he takes the first bite. It’s a bit unnerving. “It’s good. Were you worried it might not be?”

Clint shakes his head, then cocks it to one side when Coulson takes another bite. He tilts his head the other way when Coulson takes another one. Coulson carefully licks some of the filling off his thumb, but Clint’s frown deepens. So he’s not looking for a show, then.

“Wait, wait,” Clint says, and kneels up. He takes the eclair out of Coulson’s hand and breaks off a messy piece. He holds it out for Coulson, feeds him the rest of the pastry that way.

Coulson goes along with it, and Clint squints, tries a couple of small pieces, then a larger one.

When he’s finished, Clint sits back down and frowns again. “I don’t get it.”

“Clint?"

“I don’t get it. Did that do anything for you, Sir?” Clint glances pointedly at Coulson’s pants, then his own crotch. “Cause I got _nothing_ going on downstairs.”

* * *

 


	4. Chapter 4

“That young man...” The woman obviously thinks she’s whispering, but Clint can hear her. She probably doesn’t know he’s there; he’s been working on his stealth since about an hour after they arrived at the hospital. He’s hoping to hear something juicy. He’s hoping to hear anything at all, really. Hospitals are the most boring places ever.

At least this time they’re not here for him, or for Steve. They’re here for happy news. Bruce called to tell them Pepper had gone into labor. He told them not to come to the hospital until after the baby was born. “There’s no real way to tell how long these things will take.” But he had to have known better. The whole gang had shown up within minutes of each other and were now camped out in one of the lounge-style waiting areas outside the maternity ward.

Clint peers around the nurse’s desk again.

The old lady is crooking her gnarled finger so Jo will lean closer. “He is wearing a dog collar.”

Oh. So she’s talking about him, then.

Josephina tilts her head to look around the elderly woman. Clint waves. Jo waves back. “Yes, ma’am,” Jo says cautiously. “He is.”

He is, in fact, wearing a collar. It is not, however, made for dogs.

It’s purple, and supple, and of higher quality leather than Clint’s ever seen for a dog before - maybe one of those yappy little purse dogs rich women have - but this doesn’t seem like the time for semantics. Coulson had told him to wear it today, and he hadn’t wanted to take it off for the trip to the hospital when Tony’s call came.

“Oh. Well. Okay then. Can’t be too sure with my eyes these days.” The woman shuffles back over to the waiting room area, where the rest of the gang are taking up pretty much all the space. They all slide over en masse and leave plenty of room for the elderly woman, though.

Clint glances over to Coulson, who is standing to offer the woman his seat. Coulson had given him a gorgeous platinum infinity collar a while back, when Steve first started seeing Bucky. Coulson seemed to think that Clint’s friends taking big steps in their lives might make Clint freak out.

He wasn’t wrong, but still.

He’d presented it with the intention that Clint could wear it all the time, every day, even if they weren’t scening, even if they weren’t even spending time together. Clint absolutely loved it, and for about a week, everything was perfect.

But Clint spent most of that week in this spacey, not quite down but definitely not fully reasonable and rational headspace and it kind of messed with him. A lot. It was one thing to hang out on the floor of Tony’s lake house or the club or Steve’s shop, and ride that halfway to subspace dopiness for an evening.

But then he spent almost an hour in the cereal aisle at the grocery store because Coulson couldn’t pick up the phone and tell him if by “corn flakes” he meant actual corn flakes or frosted flakes or if he was just using that as shorthand for any kind of cereal.

What if Coulson wanted to use the corn flakes in meatloaf? Store brand would have been best for that, even though Coulson wasn’t a big fan of meatloaf.

What if they were supposed to be the topping on a casserole? Coulson had never made a casserole with cornflakes on it - at least not since Clint had been living with him. What if Coulson wanted Clint to make him a hashbrown casserole for dinner?

The manager had come by and told him he had to buy his groceries or leave, and it was only the fact that Jeanie started her shift before the cops answered the phone that saved Clint from (yet another) embarrassing trip to the slammer.

After Coulson rescued him from the grocery store, which Clint felt incredibly guilty about and put himself in the corner until he could work up the nerve to call the store and apologize and make sure Coulson did something nice for “that girl who constantly follows Bucky around like a lovesick puppy.”

“She’s good people, Sir, even if she has misguided taste in men. You got any tubby single friends?”

Coulson had smiled and taken Clint’s hands and brought him to the bedroom to kneel at the end of the bed.

“Sweet boy, I think it’s time we call an end to this little experiment,” Coulson said, reaching toward Clint’s neck.

Clint flinched so hard he lost his balance, breaking position. “I don’t. Why? What’d I do?”

“No, sweetheart, no, no. I misspoke, I’m so sorry. I’m not taking it away for good.”

“Don’t take it,” Clint said, his eyes clenched shut and his hands wrapped around the collar. It was hard and unyielding in his hands, and was hurting the back of his neck with the way he was pulling on it, but not nearly as much as the thought of Coulson taking it away from him. He knew he messed up today, but it hadn’t been unforgivable, had it?

“No, sweet boy, I’m not taking it away. I’d never take your collar away, Clint, you’re my sweet, perfect boy. Come on now. you can sleep in it tonight, but starting tomorrow morning I think we should save it for special occasions.”

Clint really wasn’t feeling up for an argument. He was just happy Sir said he could keep his collar. He could probably figure out a way to keep it on in the morning when he wasn’t so tired. And cold. He was really cold. “I’m really cold, Sir.”

“Come on, honey. Come into bed.”

In the morning, Coulson made sure Clint was thinking clearly and said, “I just think maybe you shouldn’t wear it all the time.”

“But I want to.”

“Well, you wanted to be my housewife, too, and after three days you’d repainted the entire house purple and shot dirty words into my living room wall.”

Clint pouted. “I didn’t use bullets.”

“Bullet holes would have been easier to patch, wouldn’t they?” Coulson reasoned. “Maybe wrist cuffs instead for every day. We can go shopping.  And then we’ll see if Jeanie will forgive me for abandoning you in your hour of need.”

“Jeanie?”

“Bucky’s girlfriend.”

“Oh. I’m telling him you said that.”

Coulson raised his eyebrow.

“I’m not telling him you said that,” Clint said obediently.

Coulson got him a set of thick, heavy duty wrist cuffs instead though to wear everyday, and those made Clint feel safe and loved and supported and left him with the ability to make minor decisions for himself.

And Coulson said his meatloaf was even better than Ruby’s, which bordered on sacrilege, but also made Clint feel amazing.

Also, sometimes if he was really, really good, Coulson would lock the cuffs together and suspend him from the hook in his office that Clint had to stand on his toes to reach. But only if he was really, really good.

Being good did not, apparently, include hiding in the ceiling to surprise Coulson’s interns.

The sliding glass doors of the waiting room whooshed open, letting in a stream of chilled air and breaking Clint out of his memories

“Jo, any updates?” Bucky calls out, coming up to the desk, precariously balancing three full trays of coffee. Clint reaches out to steady them, and Bucky smiles gratefully at him. 

He carefully tilts one her way, but she waves it off. “The cafeteria coffee is something out of a nightmare.”

Clint double-checks the cup. “It’s Starbucks.”

Jo snatches one. She takes a small sip, testing the temperature before gulping half of it down. “No, no update. But it’s only been a short time.”

Bucky raises his eyebrow. “It’s been fourteen hours.”

“Fabiana took thirty-two to come out into the world. This? No pasa nada.”

“Wow,” Clint says.

“Bucky, thank god, gimme.” Stark reaches around Bucky to the coffee cups.

“Shouldn’t you be in the delivery room?” Clint asks him, abandoning stealth and taking a cup as well. It’s no fun hiding from people who don’t really care if you’re gone. He hands the coffee to Coulson, who thanks him softly.

“You can have one,” he says.

Clint rolls his eyes. “I know.” He must really be in a mood if Coulson’s giving him obvious orders about things he knows he’s already allowed to do. He focuses back on whatever Stark’s saying and doesn’t look for Steve. This night isn’t about him.  

“Pep said I was making her contractions worse. All that _breathe-breathe-breathe_. She got the drugs, I don’t know what she has to breathe for.”

“She got the drugs?” Steve asks, tucking himself under Bucky’s arm. He reaches for a coffee cup but doesn’t drink.

“Hell yeah, she got the drugs,” Darcy cheers.

Sweet, Clint just won five bucks in the pool.

“Okay, Darcy, calm down. Pepper just didn’t seem like the type -” Steve started, ducking back out from under Bucky’s arm and walking over to the elderly woman who commented on Clint’s collar. “Would you like a coffee, ma’am?”

She accepts and joins in with Darcy,Jane, and Maria berating Steve over the use of modern medicine in childbirth. Steve looks to Bucky with a pleading expression, but Bucky, wisely, pretends he doesn’t see. In this case, Clint can understand. It’s the only reasonable course of action.

“They promised to come get me before anything important happens,” Stark shrugs. And then shrugs again. And then paces around the waiting room.

“And you!” Tony turns back, snapping his fingers at Bucky. “He’s not even going to be named after me! Stop calling my kid ToJu!”

* * *

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Hour seventeen and still no Baby Stark Banner Potts. Technically, he’ll be just a Stark. Tony said it was for legal and financial reasons, but Pepper and Bruce agreed that giving the kid a first name, a middle name, and three last names, even short ones, was a little on the cruel and unusual side.

Several of the nurses came through the waiting room and, once they determined that Steve wasn’t there for himself, told the group they should go home and get some rest. But no one was in any hurry to leave.

Steve had fallen asleep leaning on Bucky’s shoulder, his fingers hooked tight in Bucky’s belt loop, softly snoring every once in a while. Peggy offered to spell him for a bit when Bucky started to look twitchy. He invited Clint outside with him for a walking smoke break, and Clint jumped at the chance to be included.

“Thought you quit.”

“Honeymoon was stressful,” Bucky mutters, lighting up.

Clint squints upwards, wishes he could see the stars. He always feels calmer when he knows where the sky is.

“What did you mean, you know?” Bucky asks, breaking the silence.

Clint tries to connect those dots, comes up empty. “What do I know? I don’t know anything.”

“You said you know. When Coulson said you could have a coffee.”

“Oh, _that_ ,” Clint relaxes. “Remember? I told you I got to pick a vice? I picked caffeine because Coulson is a cheating cheater who doesn’t play fair.”

“Please. Do tell.”

“Way back, after we first talked about going full twenty-four/seven, Coulson knew me well enough to know that I was going to freak out and drag Steve - or be dragged by Steve, it was always a toss up, really - out on a wacky semi-legal act self destructive childishness in an attempt to push him away.”

“Sure,” Bucky agrees.

“S’kinda what I do,” Clint says.

“Yeah, you and Steve. Peas in a pod.” Bucky sighs. He rubs his eyes, looking like he’s been awake far longer than the nearly-full day they’d been at the hospital.

Clint doesn’t like this. Honeymoons aren’t supposed to be stressful. Bucky is supposed to still be charmed by Steve’s annoying personality traits.

“Luckily? I guess? For me? Steve was fucking this beefy go-go dancer.” Clint trails off. Maybe he should have rephrased that, given the circumstances. But it’s not like Bucky didn’t know Steve was the sluttiest little virgin around before they got together. Normally he’d go on about how everyone, including the dancer, knew it was doomed from the start, but the dancer shrugged and said, “Those lips, bruh,” and Steve blushed and said “um,” and everyone knew what that meant, and there were a thousand jokes that came out of that week, but if Bucky’s already lost the shine on his marriage, Clint feels like it’s for the best if he leaves that part out.

“Uh, so the worst that happened was a raging hangover because pink girly drinks will _fuck you up_ , and glitter I couldn’t get out of the carpet for months. Steve was hanging half inside the toilet most mornings. He was also kind of covered in this guy’s body oil and kept sliding around on the tile. Except he was allergic to it and broke out in this weird rash all over his junk. He thought it was gonna fall off for like, two whole days.”

Bucky makes a breathing noise that might be a laugh in some reality.

“Did I mention we rock and rolled all night and partied ev-er-y day for, um, about a week and a half?” Clint cringes at Bucky’s raised eyebrow. “Because, yeah. Steve lost like seven pounds. When we failed to meet Coulson for post-mass brunch a second Sunday in a row, he came over bright and early at like two pm and told me flat out that I got to pick one vice to indulge in without supervision, everything else went through him. Of course, he cheerfully shouted it at me after opening all the blinds and while bodily blocking the coffee maker, because he’s a super genius.”

“Sounds like you deserved it.”

“Nah, I didn’t, but Coulson loves me, so. He spoils me.”

Bucky’s steps slow the closer they get back to the hospital.

“You okay?”

“Hmm? Yeah. Just tired. Haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Shit, do I look that bad?”

“Well.” Clint laughs a little even though it’s really not that funny. “Sam’s not out here, is he?”

“Nah. It’s fine. Sometimes things just get stuck in your head, you know? Takes a while to get over it again.”

“I don’t know, man. None of my vacations with Coulson ever reminded me anything of my army days. I think you might have done it wrong.”

Clint’s never exactly been happy he’s spent most of his life learning how to tell when someone is about to throw a punch, but he was happy he was there to catch Bucky’s fist before the brick wall behind him did.

“Punching walls is a bad idea, Bucky. Walls don’t fight fair.”

“Yeah,” Bucky gasps, sliding down the wall to slump in a heap at Clint’s feet.

He sits down with him, puts an arm around his shoulders.

After a while, Bucky’s breathing normally again. “Me and Steve are okay, though,” he says. His voice is soft, but confident.

Clint takes the first easy breath he’s taken all night. “Promise?”

“Yeah, Clint. We’re good.”

*

When he and Coulson show up for the unofficial baby shower at Stark’s club, Darcy compliments Clint’s dress and Maria asks him for advice on what to get Peggy for her birthday, which makes Clint preen a little under their attention. He likes that no one expects him to be a girl or want to be a girl when he wears silky things or dressy things or lacy things or anything else that makes him feel pretty.

Clint’s always _wanted_ to wear that stuff, always wanted to be pretty. They said he shouldn’t when he was little, but no one would tell him why. Just “boys don’t.” But Clint was most definitely a boy, and he most definitely wanted to, which made them big liars.

When he got older, people liked to say “those people are headed straight for hell.” He didn’t think wanting to be pretty was something Jesus would send him to Hell for. It wasn’t like murder or coveting or praying to false idols.

But if they said he couldn’t, and that it was wrong, he wouldn’t. Not when anything could set them off, when any wrong step could get him and his brother sent packing again.

But he’d always volunteer to do the laundry so he could at least drape the girls’ clothes over his lap under the pretense of folding them. That’s not cheating. Not really. He did fold them, after all. Eventually.

Jesus couldn’t get mad at him for doing his chores. That just wouldn’t be fair, and Mrs Pritchard from Sunday School said Jesus was always fair. Clint liked Mrs Pritchard because she only laughed a little bit when Clint asked questions. Not the mean grown up laugh like when he was about to get smacked for being stupid again, but the nice-sounding laugh that usually meant Clint was going to get a soft pat on the head, or maybe a hug, or sometimes a piece of candy.

Clint liked the hugs the best, but he didn’t earn those very often.

Sometimes candy was almost as good. He could usually give it to one of the other kids and they would smile at him and that would make him feel kind of like if he had gotten a hug.

Mrs Pritchard was real nice to him when he stayed after Sunday School to help her clean up. Beth was supposed to do it, but she wanted to play down at the crick, and she told Clint sometimes the helper got the extra cookies and juice left over. He asked Mrs Pritchard about what Pastor Jed talked about in the sermon. He’d gotten extra touched by the lord and there was a lot of strutting and whooping and hollering. It made it hard for Clint to focus on the message.

“It’s not a real lamb. It’s a mater-for - “

“Like for eating?” he asked, putting the books carefully back on the shelf and looking for her to smile and nod at him that he was doing a good job.

“No, not a tomato, Clint, a story. A thing you say when you mean something else.”

“Why can’t the Bible just say things right out? Probably stop scaring people off that way,” Clint muttered, but mostly he was happy about not having to bathe in the blood of any actual real-life lambs.

He was less happy when he learned they were going to have to wash Pastor Jed’s stinky smelly feet at the tent revival, but it was still better than anything that had to do with blood, real or mater-forical. Plus, it was church, but outside. Clint would have washed the feet of the entire congregation and then some if church got to be outside all the time.

After they moved on, to the circus and then later, in the army, Clint started to accidentally-on-purpose keep a few things from girls who stayed over - sweatshirts, a slinky dress, a couple of satin nighties. Things he could wave off, like if he didn’t buy it, it was okay, no one could blame him for having it. All guys had a thing or two left over from girls, right?

It wasn’t until he was in college that he decided to just go with it. It’s not like he hadn’t gotten beat up for less.

He’d only gotten into three fights over it, really. Probably mostly because he wore a lot of sleeveless tops.

If he was with Steve, looked even more badass than he already was, and Steve always had a reason to fight someone that had nothing to do with Clint’s wardrobe, anyway. If he was with Bucky or Natasha, he looked like he had super badass backup, which he did. And if he was with anyone else, he was probably being too silly to bother fucking with anyway.

One fight started when he was coming home from the grocery store, once out back of a drag club, which wasn’t even his fight. He’d just followed Steve into one and that’s how these things tend to play out. He has to count it though, because it turned out Steve was fighting over him.

Which was just plain stupid, and Clint told Steve it was stupid of him to fight over Clint of all people. “It is especially stupid,” he yelled at Steve, “to fight three guys” -  _duck, spin, punch_ \- “with face tattoos” -  _kick, kick, duck_ \- “who are easily twice your size” -  _punch punch punch_ \- “over me!”

And Steve yelled back at Clint, “I can fight” -  _punch, kick, fall_ \- “whoever I damn well want” -  _stagger, punch, kick_ \- “and I will fight” -  _wheeze, punch, fall_ \- “anyone who even thinks about insulting you” -  _wheeze, wheeze, kick_ \- “and fuck you anyway for thinking so little of the both of us.”

And then they both said a lot of things that were actually really sweet if they hadn’t been yelling them in an alley while they were bleeding and punching other people.

And then Steve fainted. Clint carried him bridal-style to the hospital in a little bit of a panic, but he never told Steve that part. Clint just told him they got a cab.

The worst fight he ever had was when Grant had sucker punched him out of fucking nowhere and asked him if his Daddy liked it when Steve wore the dresses better, because at least the little whore was built like a bitch already. He’d said some other stuff, but Clint pretty much blanked out until Maria came and got him out of the holding cell.

Which was probably for the best, since Clint sometimes still kind of has fantasies about piling into a car with Bucky and tracking that fucker down. Maria said she’d make some calls and the local precincts could be persuaded to look the other way for a while. Tony’d offered to put up bail money, just in case.

Coulson really would punish him if he did that, though, and Coulson’s punishments were no laughing matter. Last time he got into really-not-even-really-all-that-really-serious-really trouble, Coulson had made him eat boiled broccoli and carrots and eggs at every meal, called him “Clint” all week, barely touched him below the neck and definitely wouldn’t let him touch himself, and grounded him. To his room. For a week.

Fucking apiarist. What the hell was a beekeeper doing in a tattoo shop in the first place?

“What, this old thing?” Clint shot back, something he heard a lady say on an old movie and he liked the sound of it. “I’ve had this since college.”

“College days,” Darcy smiles, marking down his bet for what ToJu’s first word would be. Clint has twenty bucks riding on it being “no.” He’s Tony’s kid after all.

Clint wishes he knew what his first word was. Coulson said his was “Dada.” Bucky’s was “cookie,” which Amy told them all at the wedding. Steve had spit his drink out his nose and it nearly went all over Bucky‘s mom. It was amazing. Clint had laughed so hard he cried.

“Yeah, I got up to some crazy stuff,” Darcy says proudly. “One year I got an intern.”

“Got an intern to what?” Clint asks, focusing his attention on the here and now.

“No,” Jane says, “She just got an intern. For herself.”

“I miss being nineteen,” Darcy says wistfully.

“Uh. Well, I was more like thirty, but yeah.”

“Oh, hey, better late than never,” Jane says.

Darcy pins him with a look. “What’s up with Steve and Bucky?”

Clint chokes on his beer. “What?”

“Please,” Darcy scoffs. “Like you didn’t notice. You notice everything. Something fucked them up on that cruise, and I want to know what it was. And if I have to taze it.”

“Yeah. I don’t know. I’m hoping they’ll snap out of it, and it seems like Bucky’s trying, but Steve...” Clint trails off.

Steve’s over at the corner table, sketching something in his super secret notebook of secrets. He won’t let anyone look at it, but the back cover is filled with the same star-surrounded-by-concentric-circles pattern over and over again.

“I saw them at the shop the other day,” Maria joins them, filling a new rocks glass with club soda and lime, even though the one she brought to the bar with her was still mostly full. “They were just kind of sitting there. Not touching. Not talking. Just sitting. They weren’t even listening to music.”

“That is definitely not good,” Darcy says.

Clint sets his bottle down heavily. “I’m gonna...” He hooks his thumb over his shoulder and turns to go find Coulson.

“Sir?”

“Clint,” Coulson smiles at him, and then sobers. “Are you okay, sweet boy?”

“Can we go, Boss?”

“Sure, sweetheart. Of course.”

* * *

 


	6. Chapter 6

Clint was a difficult sub. Nothing in Coulson’s past could have prepared him for just how much effort it could be to take care of someone like Clint. Nothing in his past had actually lead him to believe people like Clint _existed_.

He forced Phil to be a better Dom. Coulon had to learn to change his mindset from his usual “hurts so good” to a new, different, “so good it hurts” for Clint.

Twenty-four/seven worked well between the two of them. Clint took care of the house, handling the budget and filling in on all the chores Phil himself detested. Except emptying the dishwasher. For some reason, Clint hated that particular chore above all others. Clint was a phenomenal cook, although occasionally he’d prepare dishes that were a little lowbrow to Coulson’s admittedly snobbish pallet, they were nearly always delicious.

Clint worked wonders around the office, too. A few of Coulson’s shorter-lasting interns had assumed Clint’s visits were strictly for sexual purposes. Those who commented were out the door by the end of the day. But Clint actually ran accounts payable and receivable for the entire label, not just Coulson’s division, and saved Fury somewhere in the high six figures annually with his unconventional take on marketing, accounting, investments, and other financial affairs. Stark had found out, because Tony always found everything out eventually, and now Clint freelanced with his corporations as well.

Coulson had told him he certainly didn’t need to “earn his keep”, thinking that maybe that was what was going through Clint’s head, but Clint just took his reading glasses off and said, “I like numbers. They make sense. They’re always going to do what I tell them to, and they’re never going to lie to me.”

Coulson has to take a moment to process that, and Clint misinterpreted. “Unless. I mean, if you don’t want me to, I can. You know, I always wanted to be a housewife,” and three days later Coulson had a horribly misbehaved sub and several four-letter words shot into his living room walls.

“Well, you picked a beautiful font,” was the first thing he said. “You’re very talented. And in more trouble than you could possibly imagine.”

As a sub, Clint was a mess of contradictions. He like sensation, but he shied away from pain - although there was nothing he wouldn’t endure for Coulson, if he thought it would make his Dom happy. Clint’s biggest, basest need, Coulson had learned, was to feel wanted. He liked being needed, cherished. But mostly useful.  

He adored being tied up, but hated being tied down. He adored feeling secured, but didn’t deal well with feeling trapped.

He didn’t care for blindfolds, but they didn’t bother him. He indulged Coulson’s exhibitionist streak. He loved topping, and almost cried when Coulson told him he’d of course be allowed to.

He hated spankings, but he loved floggers.

“Thick, not stinging,” he’d admitted in one of his confessionals. “Stinging hurts. Makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong, been bad. But if I haven’t been bad, I shouldn’t have to feel like that. But sharp is good. I like sharp.”

“Like, hmm, knifeplay?” Coulson asked, a little uneasy. He’d done it, and he loved it, but given Clint’s history, he couldn’t imagine that would have gone well for his sweet boy.

“Yes,” Clint breathed, his eyes wide. “Yes, oh, let’s do that. Let’s do that right now!”

“Patience, sweet boy. So you’ve done it before?”

“Um.”

“Clint?”

“Well. Not so much as actually done it for realsies? But, I mean, I know I’ll like it. I know I will, Boss.”

When Coulson finally felt like they’d discussed it enough, he spent hours trying Clint up, securing him and ensuring he was down in the right frame of mind. He brought a frozen butterknife out of his supplies. The sensation would be incredible, but there would be absolutely no damage, not even a mark left on Clint’s back.

“Alright sweet boy. Just a little one, now,” he said, bringing the blunt tip of the knife to Clint’s shoulder blade. He drew the knife slowly downward.

Clint screamed, _“Phil! Stop!”_

He had the ropes cut and Clint freed faster than he thought it would be possible to move.

“Clint, I’m here, it’s fine, you’re fine. Look, see? There’s nothing,” he babbled  at Clint, holding him close and rubbing his back and arms in long, soothing strokes until Clint calmed.

Phil knew there would be an entirely different crash once Clint realized he’d safeworded out of a scene Phil had been very much enjoying until that point, but his focus was on calming Clint and finding out what exactly had gone wrong.

“Too much. Too… Too much,” was all Clint could say until the next morning, when he sat down with Phil over breakfast, at the table, and actually discussed it rationally.

“Maybe start on my thigh? Where I can see next time? If, I mean. If you want to try again. I get it if I ruined it for you,” Clint said, stirring brown sugar through his oatmeal.

“Sweet boy, we can try it again whenever we’re ready. Nothing is ruined. You were perfect.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re very proud of me for trusting you to stop, blah blah, I know. You told me,” Clint scoffed. “I didn’t even say the right word.”

“But I heard you anyway.”

“We can’t all be perfect,” Clint said angrily.

It was not the argument Phil had prepared for. Clint would have made a hell of a prosecutor. Coulson looked away. He knew, of course, that he had acted appropriately. But he often felt at war with himself, after, when his rational mind had the chance to reassert itself. It was one thing to feel guilt over getting off on hurting someone, especially someone as good and sweet as Clint. It was quite another to have that guilt used against him when he had done the right thing.

“I’m not perfect, Clint. But I was in control.”

Clint snorts. “Of course you were.”

“Yes. I was. Because that’s where I need to be.”

“Right, because poor little Clint can’t control -”

“No. No, you will stop talking and you will listen to me. I need it. I need to have control like you need to not have it. I’m not the Dom because you’re the sub, Clint. If it worked like that, you could get this from anyone. Hell, you could still be fucking Steve wherever you felt itchy,” Coulson took a steadying breath. “I _need_ it. And I’m good at it. And I like it. But I’m good at it and I like it because I need it. Not the other way around.”

“Oh.”

“Right. So yes, I heard you safeword because I was paying attention to you, Clint. I see you go from green to yellow before you do. That’s why you’ve never had to say it before. Because I control the scene and turn it back to green for you before it gets to that point. That’s what I do. And it’s so easy to do with you, my sweet boy, because we fit. We’re good together. We’re so good together.”

“Because you’re perfect,” Clint said, smiling.

“And so are you. Now eat your oatmeal.”

* * *

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

Steve was still snoring away, pressed tight against Bucky in the dark. He hadn’t thought it would be possible to wrap up in each other more than they had before the honeym - _before_ , but here they are. Steve hasn’t been able to sleep if he isn’t plastered next to Bucky, his fingers digging into Bucky’s stomach until he finally relaxes, waking if Bucky leaves the bed or even rolls over. The lack of sleep had caught up to him, making him cranky and quick to anger, and he’d spent most of the spring red-nosed and sucking down cough drops and NyQuil.

Between that, what had happened back in February, finishing up the last of his bookings, and the preparations for starting the documentary he’d been making with Antoine and the realtors, Steve had isolated himself from most of their friends. Bucky probably could have done more to prevent Steve from pulling away as much as he had, but he was a little busy battling his own demons.

Busy enough that Clint was one step away from moving in with them, and he was pretty sure Sam and Peggy at the very least were going to take advantage of this weekend’s cookout to stage a severe talking-to, if not a full-on intervention.

He was willing to risk it, though. Getting back to something normal, socializing with the whole group, maybe that’d do Steve some good. Get his mind off of everything that had happened.

“Buck?” Steve mumbles sleepily. At least he didn’t follow it up by sitting up and frowning at the empty side of the bed. Those few mornings he’d done that, barely awake and not even aware of it until Bucky’s breath rushed out of him like he’d been gut punched, had left them both walking through the day like zombies, barely speaking to anyone, including each other.

Bucky’d told him his best weapon had always been his words, and there just weren’t any. Not for days like that.

“Yeah, babe. I’m here.”

“You sleep any?”

Bucky kisses him and settles Steve back against his chest. “Some. More than I thought I would.”

“So you’re not sleepy?” Steve asks him, wiggling in his lap a little.

It takes Bucky a moment to realize Steve is wiggling _with intent._ It’s not like they hadn’t had sex since they came home. They had. Some. It was just kind of … half-hearted. So to speak.

Bucky hums. “No. I’m not sleepy. How about you, babe? You sleepy?”

Steve turns his face to bite at Bucky’s bicep. “I keep trying to think of something to say that includes the phrase ‘I could get up’ but it’s not working.”

Bucky smiles, runs his hands down Steve’s left arm to tap against the tattoo on Steve’s finger. He needs to remember to feed the kid sometimes. Steve never remembers on his own, and it’s only gotten worse since February. “It’s a good thing you locked me in, if that’s your best line. Didn’t even attempt it. Shameful.”

“I’ll show you shameful,” Steve says, rolling over to straddle Bucky’s thighs.

“Swing and a miss,” Bucky says, steadying Steve and arching his back, pressing his belly up against Steve a little more. “Oh for two.”

Steve’s eyelids flutter and he squeezes his knees against Bucky’s hips. “I’m - I’m going to make blondies for the cookout,” he says, bending forward to trail biting kisses across his collarbone. “For just us.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm,” Steve hums, distracted. “Grand slam?”

“Maybe a ground rule double,” Bucky flips them over and presses Steve down into the mattress. “Just for us, huh?”

Steve hitches his legs up around Bucky’s hips. “Yeah.”

“Been a while,” Bucky says, slicking himself up and holding Steve open. He probably needed more prep, but he wants this, Bucky wants this, wants it _now_.

The way Steve’s groaning is definitely not a deterrent. Bucky slowly inches his way home, watches how Steve bites his lip, feels him scratching at his back. Bucky knows he’s going to have a patchwork of faint red lines across his shoulders when they get out to the lake house, thrusts hard and deep to make Steve leave more.

“Need this, need this, need it, Buck,” Steve babbles.

“I know, babe. I got you,” and he holds Steve down, braces a good portion of his weight on Steve’s shoulder, his arm, his wrist. He won’t be the only one marked up this weekend.

*

Bucky helps Steve climb out of the backseat of Natasha’s car. He tries not to smile over the fact that Steve winces a little, still stiff and sore from earlier. From the pointed look he gets in return, he’s not doing the greatest job keeping it to himself.

Bucky really, really doesn’t care.

Sam unpacks all the food they brought from the trunk, and he and Steve take the trays of food they brought into the house while Bucky takes ToJu from a very tired-looking Pepper. She claims he’s been fussy all morning, but he’s calm and happy when he’s in Bucky’s arms. After about five minutes, he’s asleep enough for Bucky to put him down for his nap.

“Fudging _finally_ ,” Pepper sighs at Nat, still trying to work on the whole no-cussing thing.

Bruce offers Bucky a million dollars, “literally, a _million dollars_ ,” if he’ll spend the rest of the week with the kid. “Just long enough for us to get some sleep,” he says.

“Maybe a quick nooner,” Tony offers, drifting through the living room and back out onto the deck where the party is in full swing.

“ToJu not what you’d call a good sleeper?” Steve asks, following Bucky out onto the deck to join the party.

Pepper and Bruce just groan at them. “Tony already runs on zero sleep and pure caffeine. He’s used to it.” She closes her eyes and leans against Bruce. “The books say he should be sleeping by now,” she says.

“Your baby is not a book, Pepper,” Natasha says. “He’s fine.”

“Stop calling my kid ToJu,” Tony grumbles. He doesn’t really mind, which is good, since the nickname stuck and the whole gang now uses it. “The poor kid is never going to be called by his given name, is he?”

“His mom goes by Pepper and his favorite uncle is called Bucky, so. No. No he isn’t,” Sam points out, ever the voice of reason.

Darcy waves at them from the shaded area on the deck and calls dibs on the baby as soon as he wakes up.

“More than fine with me,” Bucky says, helping himself to a beer and passing one to Steve. “I have no desire to be the kid’s favorite nanny.”

“That’s because you already _are_ ,” Steve and Darcy say at the same time.

“For now,” Darcy narrows her eyes and points a finger into the center of Bucky’s chest. “I’m coming for you, Barnes.”

Bucky ducks behind Steve and uses him as a human shield while they make their way across the deck. Steve takes his sketchpad and settles in out of the way in the shade. He’d been hit with inspiration for this negative space thing that’ll apparently look perfect rounding out Antoine’s back and thigh.

”Honestly, Steve, I don’t know if I’m okay with you tattooing Antoine’s ass,” Bucky says, sticking close, chasing the quickly fading intimacy from the morning.  

“It’s a back piece, really,” Steve clarifies, shading carefully around the edges. “That continues over his hip and onto his thigh. And really? Are you jealous?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Steve squints up at him. “If I agreed it was his ass would you be jealous?”

Bucky laughs. “You like it when I’m jealous?”

Steve shrugs a little. “Caveman Bucky is kinda hot, I don’t know,” he says defensively. He’s blushing. It’s adorable.

“Like James?” Bucky says. It’s out of his mouth before he realizes what he’s said.

Steve stills.

“Shit, babe, I’m -”

“No, it’s okay.” Steve starts sketching again, then turns to a new page and starts up something darker, with thick, jagged lines.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay, Buck.”

“But -”

“I said it’s _okay_ , Bucky. Fuck. We can talk about them. They happened. We said it wouldn’t make it weird.”

“I know.”

“ _Then stop making it weird!_ ” Steve hisses.

“Okay, fuck, I’m sorry.”

Steve throws his pencil at Bucky. “Seriously. Go, have fun, relax. Get a little tipsy. We’ll fuck in Tony’s guest bedroom and I’ll get a sunburn. It’ll be awesome.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Have a burger. Or three.”

“Maybe later. You brought those blondies, right?”

Steve grins. “Hell yeah I did.”

Bucky leans down to kiss him on his forehead. “You sure we’re good?”

“I’m gonna push you in the lake, swear to god.”

* * *

 


	8. Chapter 8

Clint hates Memorial Day. It’s by far his least favorite day of the year, narrowly beating out April Fool’s Day, his birthday, and Father’s Day. He always gets pouty and petulant and cranky and he knows he’s acting like a five year old, but he can’t help it, and that makes it even worse.

Coulson always tries to make those days better by giving Clint things like new legos or arrows or a new nightie that has a beautiful lavender soft lace camisole and bloomers with royal purple ribbons, but it just makes Clint feel worse because they’re perfect, but they don’t help at all. Coulson also gives Clint attention and space, whichever he needs, and he almost always knows when to give which. That helps a little more, but never on memorial day.

When he was a kid, memorial day was full of being shoved off on various relatives who were too poor and too drunk to pay any attention to him - because, as his father was so fond of grumbling pretty much non-stop, it’s not like their work was closed just because rich fucks wanted to have a cookout. Like they didn’t get enough time off already.

“If them assholes wasn’t smart enough to buy their fancy food before, they should have to suffer with the rest of us,” he’d say.

One of the worst whoopings Clint ever got was when came home excited for the end of the year Memorial Day cookout at school, because everyone was excited to eat hot dogs just like his family did all the time at home.

Clint never did figure out why that was worth a whooping. It wasn’t like they didn’t eat hot dogs _a lot_ at home. It was fun to be the expert on something for once, and he told all his friends how to put the fixings on for maximum coverage, even if he couldn’t sit down too well and had to wear long pants to cover the welts.

If his babysitters weren’t drunk, they were dragging him and Barney to cemeteries where they had to say nice things about terrible people just because they were dead. Like that’s an accomplishment.

“News flash, Aunt Bertha, everyone dies,” Barney said, and Clint got it with a willow switch, too, even though he hadn’t said anything.

He’d thought it, though, and Pastor Jed said that was the same as doing it, and the devil would know and come get him if his thoughts weren’t clean and pure. Clint spent that whole summer terrified the heatwave and drought in Iowa was all his fault because he couldn’t help but sometimes think bad things. They just happened in his head without him even trying to think them.

Barney said Pastor Jed had a wife not too much older than them and wouldn’t know a clean thought if it bit him on the ass, and Clint giggled. Then he slammed his hands over his mouth and prayed and prayed for forgiveness.

A tornado hit the church that night and Pastor Jed was fine but for a whack on the head from the big wooden cross, and Clint to this day isn’t sure if that was punishment meant for him, or Jesus agreeing with Barney.

He doesn’t go to church much anymore anyway.

It has nothing to do with the one time Coulson took him to church - _mass_ , he called it, said Clint should dress nicely. He wasn’t really paying attention, focused on paperwork. He knew this was important to Coulson, the same way it was important to Steve.

Steve might be a better match for Coulson than Clint was. Maybe he could try to get them together the next week. If they hit it off, Clint would get to take credit for matchmaking. He’d be an important fixture in their stories forever. That would be nice. Not as nice as keeping Coulson all to himself, but nice. Steve wasn’t seeing anyone, and Coulson just had him, as far as Clint knew.

“So, like a suit?” Clint asked. His only suit was the one he’d worn on their first date, and it was definitely a date suit, not a church-mass suit.

“No, just nice,” Coulson said. Clint didn’t want to bother him again and risk him changing his mind by asking what “just nice” meant.

He didn’t want to over-do it, and make people think he was showing off. Vanity’s probably still a sin for Catholics. But he didn’t want to underdo it, and make Coulson look bad. That’s gotta be a sin, too.

He’d gathered all his courage and knocked on Peggy’s shop door and held his breath when she opened the door. “I need your help,” He said, trying not to breathe.

“Come in,” she said, stepping back.

Clint just shook his head. “Diner,” he mouthed, and turned to hurry away before he had to take a deep, deep breath.

She slid into his booth about ten minutes later, Maria in tow.

“Is this a professional matter or a personal one?” Maria asked him.

“Personal for you and me, pro-tip style for Pegs, there,” he replied. “What’s ‘just nice’ for church-mass clothes? We got about” - he twisted his body to check the clock above the register and nearly knocked his Coke off the table - “about sixteen hours to make me presentable over at Saint Anthony’s.”

“Not Saint Peter’s?” Peggy asked.

Clint shook his head. “Not meeting Steve. Going with Coulson.”

“Ah,” Maria said, nodding at Peggy.

They took him shopping and helped him find some slacks and a button down shirt and a vest and said he looked very smart.

“But do I look _just nice_?” he asked.

Maria gave him a critical once-over and said she’d wear it if she were going to mass, and that was a gold seal of approval. Maria always looked really nice. She even looked nice in her uniform.

Coulson told him there would be a lot of standing and kneeling, though he didn’t have to participate. Clint told him he was used to moving around a lot during a church service. “One time, Aunt Bertha got so filled with the spirit she fell out and it took the whole length of _The Old Rugged Cross_ before she came back to herself.”

Coulson opened his mouth like he was going to say something, and then thought better of it. Maybe he meant something else.

When the preacher man - _priest_ \- said something Clint actually agreed with. Clint put his hands in the air and said “amen!” and the priest stuttered over his fancy Latin words and everyone turned around to stare at them.

Coulson just gently pulled Clint’s arms back down and patted him on the hand, but Clint excused himself and hid in the bathroom until Coulson came to get him when the service was over.

Catholic sermons were _long_.

“At least there weren’t any snakes,” Clint said when he’d pushed his pancakes through the syrup until they’d disintegrated at breakfast after.

Coulson reared back in shock. “ _Snakes_?”

“It’s not like I ever _did_ it,” Clint explained. “I didn’t really want to. And they didn’t let kids do it anyway.”

“Thank god,” Coulson said. He still looked like he disapproved, so Clint tried to reassure him, told him Barney said they took all the poison out of ‘em first, and that they used a lot of those snakes that are harmless but look like the ones that aren’t. Those were the ones SallyAnn’s Pa always went for, Barney’d said. 

“They’re dumb as rocks, Clint, but they ain’t _stupid_.”

“But that’d be a _trick_ ,” Clint said, confused.

“Well, _duh_ ,” Barney said, and rode off as fast as he could on the bike he’d won for the day off Jack Hansen playing mercy. Jack was stupid for lots of reasons, but especially if he thought Barney would ever call mercy. Clint had asked if he could ride it, but Barney only had it for the day, and Clint didn’t know how to ride, and Barney didn’t have time to teach him. He’d said if he won it again, he’d teach him, but Jack wouldn’t play mercy with Barney again, and Barney sucked at poker.

Clint started to pay closer attention in church, and learned all sorts of things about snakes. He read every book in the library about them, and did a report in science class. He even got to get up in front of everyone and read it to them. He got an A, and a 100, and gold star on it. He asked Mrs Murphy if he could have a purple star instead and she gave him a whole sheet of them. He didn’t even have to give back the gold one.

“Can I get a sn-”

“No, Clint.”

“Yeah, fine,” Clint sighed. He hadn’t expected Coulson would let him get a snake as a pet anyway. Maybe if he hit it off with Steve, then he could get one.

*

“We don’t have to go,” Coulson says, looking over the top of his tablet at Clint.

“I want to. I wanna see everyone, Sir. You deserve a nice casual weekend.” Clint squeezes his fingers together under the table. He’d eaten all his breakfast, even though Coulson didn’t have a clean your plate rule. Clint knows better than to waste food. He finishes his sentence, too, since it seems like Coulson is probably in a _talk about your feelings_ mood. “I think it’ll be a good time.”

“And Steve will be there,” Coulson says, laying his tablet aside.

“And Steve’ll be there,” Clint sighs. “And he’s been kind of avoiding me since the honeymoon.”

“I’m sure that’s nothing, sweet boy. He’s been awfully busy. And his allergies are really bad this year. You know his meds always knock him out.”

Even Clint can tell he’s reaching. “Yeah, I guess,” he mutters into his coffee cup. He doesn’t want to argue. Coulson had been working hard, and Clint’s funk probably hasn’t been making it any easier. He put up with a lot, being with Clint.

It’s not that he ever made him feel bad about it, and he mostly seemed to enjoy it. Coulson was a really good Dom. But Clint wasn’t dumb enough to think his “one day a week out of the house and away from me” rule was all about Clint maintaining his independence, and not about Coulson maintaining his sanity.

It’s not like Clint doesn’t know he’s a pain in the ass, and demanding, and immature, and kind of a mess.

It’s that he doesn’t really know how to not be, even when he tries.

Clint feels a sharp tug on his hair. He hadn’t even noticed Coulson get up for more coffee.

“Go take a shower,” Coulson said, his attention back on the news app on his tablet. “Then get dressed - whatever you want to wear today, but I think jeans would be good - and then finish your chores. We’ll leave around noon.”

“Noon?” Clint asked. Tony said they’d be firing up the grill about one, but it’d take two hours to get out to the lake house, and Coulson liked to be prompt.

“I have some things I want to do before we go,” Coulson said, tapping on his screen. “Now, go.”

* * *

 


	9. Chapter 9

Bucky’s flexing his left hand and relaxing in the shade. Clint’s telling another story of getting in minor trouble on base, smiling and laughing and gesturing widely with his beer bottle from down on the floor. His temple’s resting on Coulson’s knee, and Coulson’s hand is settled in his hair.

Tony bought a glass-topped table last summer for this area of the deck specifically so that the people on the other side of the table - Sam and Bucky, at the moment - could carry on a conversation with Clint and still see him. Tony’s thoughtful in the best, strangest ways.

Clint hasn’t told him, but Bucky’s pretty sure it wasn’t exactly Clint’s choice to leave the army. He’s pretty sure it wasn’t exactly _not_ his choice either.

From the very few things Clint has said, Bucky’s pretty sure DADT played a role, and he’s nearly positive that an older, superior officer was involved. But if Clint doesn’t want to tell him all about it, Bucky figures he owes him his privacy.

Clint and Coulson had been the last of the gang to arrive, Coulson in a white tee shirt and khaki work pants and Clint in a shockingly understated pair of ratty jeans and a Strike Team Delta band tee. They’d both seemed relaxed, but Coulson was watching Clint in a very specific though subtle way.

Bucky doesn’t think anyone else noticed, but he recognizes it from watching Steve when he decides he’s feeling well enough to get back to work after he’s been sick before Bucky (or medical science, or good fucking sense) thinks it’s quite time.

It’s probably the same way Bucky’s been watching Steve for the last three months. He knows Clint knows, he knows they’re going to have to talk to him soon, get things out in the open, stop him from worrying. He doesn’t know what they’re going to tell him.

When Clint and Thor step away to grab another round of beers for the table, Bucky raises his eyebrows at Coulson.

Coulson sighs. “He’s about Memorial Day the way you are about Veteran’s Day.”

Bucky nods and tips back his beer while Sam asks, “Should we change the topic of conversation?”

“Don’t think so, he’s doing alright now. Pretty sure I took care of his mood for the next while earlier.” Coulson mimes an exaggerated spanking motion and grins.

Rhodey and Bucky laugh and it takes Sam a minute to get it. “Aw, no details, man, seriously. Anyone else need a change in topic?”

Sam’s really good at what he does, Bucky thinks, because he makes eye contact with everyone around the table, not lingering longer on one person than any other.

“No, not yet,” Rhodey says. “I got a great story about dropping a tank off - wait, let me start at the beginning.”

Tony’s hovering over Darcy, who’s come back out onto the deck holding ToJu and trailing Fabiana.

Fabi is watching Darcy about as closely as Tony is, except she’s slightly more distracted by driving monster trucks through a reproduction victorian dollhouse. Slightly. She’s rather taken with the baby, and still not convinced that anyone other than Bucky, Pepper, and her own mama know anything about anything when it comes to childcare. She’s gonna give ‘em hell when she starts preschool in the fall.

“Tony, go away. You’re annoying your own kid,” Darcy says, settling ToJu down for some belly time.

Tony goes back to pouting and refusing to speak to Steve. Tony’s version of the silent treatment involves loudly and repeatedly stating how and why he’s not speaking. This time, it’s “because your boyfriend -”

“Husband,” Steve corrects mildly.

Tony waves his hand in dismissal. “Stole my best friend! Make him give him back! He came to visit me!”

Steve just nods along, only sort of paying attention. He’s drawing something, but he seems to have gone back to smooth strokes of his pencil rather than the quick sharp lines of earlier. He’s probably working on Antoine’s ass piece again. Or he’s drawing the metal arm. He’s been doing that a lot lately.

Bucky rubs at his left bicep.

Tony gives up and starts toward Pepper and Natasha and Josephina, over by the grill, but detours when Pepper shoots him a withering glare.

“You promised, no helping,” Natasha says.

Pepper looks too tired to form words.

Tony turns the television he’d used to show the Puppy Bowl to the Indy 500. No one’s really paying much attention to it, aside from using it to redirect Tony’s attention when he starts blabbering on about funding a team and engineering a car from scratch.

“I could do it, you know. I could.”

“It doesn’t matter if you can do it, Tony. They have regulations and restrictions. Just because you can make a car, doesn’t mean it’d be legal to run it,” Bruce says, his hands full of homemade rosemary crackers and oven-fried carrot chips. “And it doesn’t mean you could drive it. Those things are precision -”

“Your mom’s a precision machine,” Tony says.

He’s clearly had this argument many, many times before, but it’s obvious Bruce is losing when Tony says, “Yeah, but if we made this adjustment here, and you helped with -” and pointed to an actual diagram he’d pulled up on a tablet.

”Tony, did you hack my files again?” Rhodey shouts, pushing away from the table right in the middle of Bucky’s story about winning a bar bet with the tech-and-sniper team he’d been friends with by out-push-upping them after six shots and a plate of fiery hot wings.

Bucky doesn’t mind; Clint had laughed so hard he’d snorted. This will give him time to cool down.

“No, honeybear, it’s not hacking when I know your password.”

“You didn’t know it, I never told you!”

“Know, guess, po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”

Bruce pulls his glasses out of his shirt pocket and leans over the diagrams, tapping and pointing and spouting out technical jargon, arguing with Rhodey.

“Whose side are you even on?”

* * *


	10. Chapter 10

No matter what Coulson says. Clint does not suck his thumb. He is not a baby.

He has very distinct memories of huge adult hands jerking his hand out of his mouth and slapping him upside the head, voices spitting out “stop being a baby,” dripping with disgust.

Two- and three- (and four- and five- — sometimes it took a while for lessons to stick with Clint) year olds weren’t really babies anymore, by anyone’s standards. Clint glances over at Fabiana from under the table and nods to himself. She’s three-and-a-half and has been putting her shoes on for the last fifteen minutes, by herself, because she is not a baby.

Clint’s pretty sure she decided that for herself, though, and didn’t have to be told by her mama. She’s a smart kid. Clint still kinda feels like she is a baby, though. But not in a bad way, just in a little kid way. It’s complicated.

ToJu doesn’t really suck his thumb, either, but Clint’s almost entirely certain that’s because he doesn’t quite realize he has thumbs. He does try to shove his entire fist in his mouth, but ToJu is, in fact, by any definition, a baby.

Complicated.

Clint leans back against Coulson’s leg, letting the sounds of Thor’s story - the army in Scanda-wherever-the-fuck seems to run a bit differently than in the good old USofA. But Thor was an officer, too, so maybe that was part of it - wash over him. He’s sure it’s an interesting story, but he’s in a kind of weird headspace and not really all that fussed with paying attention.

Besides, Steve’s over on the other side of the deck concentrating on his drawing. He said hello to Clint and Sam and Tasha said they acted perfectly normal on the way up.

“Clingy, cuddly, a little frighteningly codependent,” Sam says.

“Right, that’s what I said. Normal,” Tasha adds, patting out perfectly round, even hamburger patties.

Clint pulls his hand down into his lap again, pretending he’d just been scratching his cheek. Sometimes, when he’s falling asleep or watching tv or just thinking, like now, his hand makes its way up toward his mouth. He doesn’t bite his nails. It makes the polish chip and Clint spent way too long not being able to get new bottles if he didn’t want to pocket them to ruin a manicure on purpose.

But sometimes he presses his finger or his thumb against his lips or his teeth and just … leaves it there.

Sometimes.

Every time Clint catches himself doing it he jerks his hand away, shoving it under his thigh or in his pocket before someone can come along and smack it away for him. Not that Coulson would, probably.

Coulson only pointed it out the one time, when he was still insisting on having the “how old do you feel, tell me about your boundaries, everyone has triggers, Clint, and that’s okay” conversations. With words. In the broad daylight, like it was perfectly normal to talk about it. Like the stuff before the good part also mattered.

He knows better now, but it’s pretty much because Coulson got a lot more devious about the ways he made Clint talk about it.

*

“It’s time, sweet boy,” Coulson says, taking a seat on the ridiculous four-poster bed in their room at Stark’s lake house.

“What, _now_?” Clint whines, drawing his gaze away from Coulson’s travel bag. It’s filled with mundane things like clothes and toothbrushes and all the crap Clint forgot to pack for himself. More importantly, though, it’s filled with all the stuff Clint did remember to pack for them.

Like the candles, and the ropes, and the black and purple flogger that he bought for Coulson specifically for this trip. Or for whenever Coulson wanted to use it.

But especially if whenever Coulson wanted to use it would be soon. Like right now. Instead of this.

“Yes, now.”

“But we’re _on vacation_.”

“Does vacation mean you’re unable to speak? Because I can make that happen. If you’d rather spend the rest of this weekend in here - “

Clint smiles.

“In the corner. Silently.”

Clint stops smiling.

“Haven’t we moved beyond lameass feelings hour by now?”

“Have we?” Coulson asks.

“No,” Clint says petulantly. “Ok, get your watch.”

“Good boy.”

“Thirty minutes?”

“Thirty minutes. When you’re ready.”

Clint sits down crosslegged at Coulson’s feet. He doesn’t kneel much. Coulson doesn’t ask him to, because he knows sometimes Clint’s knees hurt when he kneels for too long. Some people didn’t care too much about that, and it’s not like Clint couldn’t ignore it to get where he needed to go in his head. He could do it. But it took longer when he had to try to drown something like that out.

Sometimes it took too long, and the good part passed him by.

Not with Coulson, though. Every once in a while, Clint wishes he’d have met Coulson back before he learned some of his bad habits. Back when he was willing to listen to anyone who seemed to know anything and take it as gospel.

“Remember the first time you brought me here?” Clint asks. “I know, you’re not going to answer me,” he rolls his eyes at Coulson’s patient face. “It’s a storytelling device. Picture it: Stark’s cabin,” Clint smiles to himself.

Coulson squeezes the back of Clint’s neck and he rests his forehead on Coulson’s knee for a minute.

Clint had been in almost this exact same position then, when he said, “It’s not like I don’t know I give you mixed signals, Sir.”

Clint hadn’t said anything for a very long time after that. “I think I’m going to need your words,” he finally said, glancing up at Coulson’s face. “Wow, that’s fun. I’m starting to get why you say that so much.”

Coulson cleared his throat. He reached for his water, took a longer-than-necessary sip.  

Clint watched him wrestle with whether or not to break his own rules. “I think it’s okay to destroy the sanctity of lameass feelings hour just this once, if you wanna put this shit behind us,” he said.

Coulson relented. “Go on, then.”

“Right,” Clint answered, suddenly at a loss for words. “So.”

“What do you mean about mixed signals, sweet boy?”

“You know. The daddy thing,” Clint stood up, shook his legs out and walked over to the closet. He reached up onto the top shelf and grabbed a tennis ball, then took it back to the bed. He laid down next to Coulson, his head near Coulson’s lap at the foot of the bed and tossed the ball into the air a few times. “We both know I’m kinda into it.”

Coulson nodded.

“Except I’m not. Not really. But I am.”

“Thank you for clearing that up, sweet boy.”

“Shut up, boss. I’m getting there.” Clint bounced the ball off the wall, just once, mostly to see if Coulson would let him get away with it.

“Clint.”

“See. Right there. That was a dad-ass thing to say.”

“That was a kid-ass thing to do.”

“I know! That’s what I mean. We both know I’m into it. But see, if you were my _daddy_ ” - Clint makes a face at the word - “you’d have whacked me on the head just then. And taken my ball. And maybe thrown the ball at my head.”

“I see.”

“Which I know you, _Coulson_ -you, _Sir_ -you, would not do. Right?”

“Right.”

“So maybe it’s difficult for me to remember that, when you actually are hitting me, which I like. I very much like. Please do not in any way take this as a cry for mercy. We are one hundred percent in the green, here, Sir. No peaches anywhere. Blech. Stone fruit, boo. In fact, if you want to lay a few good - “

“Clint,” Coulson said. He sounds stern, but Clint recognizes his trying-not-to-smile face.

“Just maybe I get confused, maybe, if. If in my head you’re also my daddy.”

Coulson hums. “So it’s simply a matter of the words?”

“Hey, Boss, it ain’t _simply_ a matter of anything,” Clint says impertinently. “Also, I never knew a dad who was proud of me, or who’d buy me dresses, or give me toys he didn’t sell for groceries the next week. So yes, but also really, really no. You know?”

* * *


	11. Chapter 11

Tuesday, Steve’s shop is closed, and Coulson took Wednesday off to surprise Clint with one of his sporadic _let’s spend all day in bed and I’ll tie you up and test out new floggers_ days, so it’s Thursday before Clint sees Steve and Bucky again.

He walks into the shop, unsure of what kind of mood they’re going to be in this time. He’s determined to get this over with, though.

Bucky lets him change the music to something a little bluesy and puts a box of jewelry on the counter. Clint gets busy sorting it while Steve finishes his last appointment of the day. When he’s done, he turns to music down a little and locks the front door, flipping the lights down.

“Peggy told us to pull our heads out of our asses, and Coulson actually yelled at me,” Steve says. He looks scandalized, like Coulson yelling is the most unimaginable punishment he can think of.

“Yeah, Coulson’s more of the silent, I’m-Not-Mad-I’m-Disappointed type.” Bucky says. “At least with us.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Clint says, coming around the counter into the main part of the shop. “You gonna tell me what I did?”  

“Oh, Clint,” Bucky says, and pulls him into one of his world-famous hugs.

Steve wiggles his way into the hug, too. “We. On our honeymoon. We met some. People,” he stalls, breaking out of the embrace, hunching his shoulders and rubbing the back of his neck. “They were...” He huffs out a laugh. “Awful.”

“Wonderful,” Bucky says at the same time, releasing Clint and backing away a little bit.

“Yeah. Um, we spent kind of a lot of time - _all_ of our time - with them, and we got really close to them.”

“Like, shockingly close,” Bucky says.

Clint’s head jerks up, and he swivels his gaze back and forth between the two of them. “Are you breaking up? Are you leaving each other for assholes you met _on vacation_? Is that -”

“No! No, that’s definitely not what’s happening. We. Fuck, Clint, Steve and me are rock solid, I promise. It’s just that, we really. We really liked these guys and they. Well. Okay, so.”

“We forgot to get their contact information. We were in another - place. On vacation,” Steve says quickly.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Yeah, we didn’t even think to get their last names. We probably won’t ever talk to them again. They’re not from around here.”

Steve makes a choked sound and walks out into the alley, leaving Bucky to finish the story.

“Shit, man, I’m so sorry,” Clint says, pulling Bucky back into the hug. “That sounds rough.”

“Steve’s taken it a lot harder than I thought he would,” Bucky says. His eyes are shiny, and Clint thinks Bucky’s taking it harder than he thought he would, too.

“Well, yeah. If you get him to have emotions that don’t come out his fists, he’s a feeling little fucker.”

“He’s having a hard time getting close to people again, I guess. Especially you, since you’re, well. You’re special to us. Kind of in a similar way. You know we love you.”

“I. You do?”

“Of course we do, Clint. Of course we do.”

“I sold the shop and we’re going to do the documentary and I love you,” Steve says in a rush, coming back in from the alley and wiggling his way between Clint and Bucky again. “Now shut up.”

*

“You seem to be in good spirits, sweet boy,” Phil says when Clint comes home from Steve’s shop and nearly bowls him over with his hug. “Did your visit with Steve go well?”

“They’re gonna be okay,” Clint says into Phil’s neck. He nuzzles closer. “I mean, you said they were and I believed you, but now they say they are, and I believe them, too.”

He pulls back suddenly. “Come play with me!” Then he makes a face. “That came out a lot more _The Shining_ than I wanted it to.”

Phil laughs.

“For _ever_ , and _ever_ , and - “

* * *


End file.
